


In Your Own Time

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Brief discussions of gender identity, But Doesn't Always Succeed, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Dean Winchester Tries, First Kiss, Fluff, Genderless Angels (Supernatural), John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Just a little sweetness and food for thought, M/M, Pansexual Castiel (Supernatural), Pre-Slash, Pride, Pride Parades, Supportive Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: Coming out and living your truth isn’t always as easy as stories and movies make out.But that’s okay. Dean has all the support he needs, whenever he’s ready.Even if he doesn’t realize it.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 507
Kudos: 2449
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	In Your Own Time

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!
> 
> For anyone reading, no matter how you identify today, tomorrow, or in the past - you are loved, appreciated, and perfect how you are.
> 
> Often, in fic, we tend to focus on the relationship between Dean and Cas, and (with exceptions of course) we don't always spend a lot of time on what it may have taken those characters to get to that point. It's not always easy. Statistically speaking, for someone Dean Winchester's age and older, it's much more likely to NOT be easy. So, this is in honor of that, this Pride month. Everyone's journey is different, but we need to love them through every stage of it.
> 
> Talking of love... look at Liz Lee's art! So gorgeous and full of feeling. We're bringing you this little pride gift together, and we hope you enjoy it!
> 
> You can find Liz [here on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/lizleeships/) and over [here on Tumblr.](https://lizleeships.tumblr.com/) Please do go give her a follow, you will not regret it!
> 
> With thanks to [jscribbles.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jscribbles/pseuds/jscribbles) She has an awesome WIP posting right now that you should check out if you like Destiel AUs! Thanks also go to captainhaterade for the late-night rescue and Jenn for the encouragement!
> 
> Be well, and safe, and loved.
> 
> \- Mal <3

The mixture of blood and dust from the second vetala hadn’t even finished dripping from Dean’s silver knife before Sam just had to go and ruin his day.

“Great job, guys!” Sam said cheerfully. “We polished off those two really fast. If we head back to the motel now, we’ll still be able to make it to the parade.” 

He said it so casually, his voice echoing as it bounced off the high, corrugated iron ceiling of the factory where the vetala couple had been hidden.

At Sam’s words, Dean’s entire being stuttered somewhere beneath his ribcage, his knuckles whitening around the knife he’d twisted in the vetala’s chest only a moment before. He’d known about the parade, of course—there were signs all over the city when they’d been driving in. Big, bright, rainbow recrimination. He’d noticed. Of course, he hadn’t  _ mentioned _ anything, but he’d noticed.

Although, it turned out that Sam wasn’t even looking at Dean.

Instead, he moved his attention to Castiel, with one of those big smiles that seemed to slide so much more easily across Sam’s face than it did Dean’s.

“See,” Sam said to Castiel, “I told you we’d be able to go.”

Wiping his angel blade on the hem of his trench coat, Castiel spared Sam one of his small, flickering smiles before secreting the weapon away back into his sleeve. “You did say that,” he agreed.

Dean blinked, waiting. But neither of them said anything else; the room was quiet, the pair of vetala, now wholly dust, crumbling like silent sandcastles at their feet. In the noiseless packing room, Dean was deafened with a deep, disgusted voice chanting,  _ “They know, they know, they know—Cas knows…” _

“Should we sweep them up?” Sam asked, apparently all done with The Topic.

Castiel peered down at the corpse-shaped dirt piles in the middle of the floor. “That’s probably for the best. I’m sure a witch could find some use for the dust if we leave it here.”

“I’ll get a few bags, then,” Sam said, jerking his thumb toward the front of the building where they’d left the Impala. “We’ll stick them in one of the storerooms in the bunker.”

“I’m sure there’s a broom around here somewhere,” Castiel mused, taking off through the door ahead that split the industrial warehouse into several rooms, striding into the office space beyond in search of something to sweep the monster remains up with.

Dean was left standing in the center of the room with his heart racing and dust settling on the toes of his boots.

They drove a couple of miles back to the motel, showered, and headed out again, before Dean found his voice—from the back seat of the Impala, sadly, because Castiel had already called shotgun by the time Dean realized his mind was nowhere that should be driving. So, he’d sat—in the bitch seat of his own damn car—and turned his thoughts over in his head again and again as Sam drove, trying to work out what to say.

Of course, in the end, he just blurted out, “Why d’you want to go a pride parade anyway?”

In the mirror, Sam gave Dean a fleeting, mild frown. “Why not?”

“You’re not—I mean—” Dean made two false starts before gesturing vaguely and feebly to Sam as a whole, where he sat stretched out casually with one hand on the steering wheel.

“And?” Sam said primly, spinning the wheel slowly in hand as he took a left off the highway, following those multichromatic paper signs that were making Dean’s heart rate jack up again. “There’s such a thing as allyship, Dean. I learned a lot back in college, I took some gender and sexuality classes that really covered a ton—but I want to go for all the people in  _ our _ lives, past and present, that deserve support.”

Dean’s mouth was shut so tight he couldn’t breathe.

“People like Charlie,” Sam continued, surprising Dean. “And Jesse, and Cesar. People who deserve to celebrate this month.”

“And Claire,” Castiel added casually, his eyes not even leaving the tarmac, as if he was only half-listening, though Dean knew better.

“And Claire,” Sam reiterated firmly, nodding his head. “And Cas, too.”

Wait—what? 

Dean didn’t have time (thank anyone-but-Chuck) to make a dumb comment like,  _ “But Cas is an angel,”  _ because Castiel himself stepped up and saved him.

“I doubt Dean ever put any thought into whether I’d be interested in such a thing,” Castiel stated calmly, looking in the rearview mirror. Dean hoped he wasn’t as flushed as he felt. “Not that I think you would mind my going to a human pride parade, but I doubt you’ve thought about parades much in general since the first apocalypse.”

Too right. He had thought about them a few times before that, though, when he was younger. But he’d never been brave enough to go, not that he’d have admitted anything of the kind. 

Dean Winchester wasn’t  _ afraid. _ He told himself that a lot.

“So, you want to go?” Dean said quietly, his eyes on Castiel, trying to remind his lungs to function. This wasn’t about  _ him _ , about his issues or his  _ feelings _ . It was about Cas. That was good…right?

Right.

Castiel’s trench coat rustled as he turned in his seat, angling his shoulder toward the door to look back at Dean more comfortably. “I’ve never been to one,” he said simply, shrugging. “I thought I should at least once.”

“Because you’re…” Dean desperately tried to form words that weren’t  _ ‘a wibbly-wobbly skyscraper of light,’  _ because in a month reserved for celebrating every variety of person, that seemed offensive at best.

“Different,” Castiel supplied gently, as if—somehow—that might be news to Dean. “A lot of the heteronormative ideas about sexuality and gender don’t really apply to me.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Yeah—of course, man.”

That Castiel was indifferent to human concepts of gender wasn’t a surprise; he’d always been perfectly clear about that. But now, suddenly reframed in rainbow light on a busy highway south of downtown, Dean wondered if there was more to his differentness, if…if…

“Hey,” Dean quietly called upfront, pulling Castiel’s attention directly—and intensely—back to him. “We haven’t—I mean, you’d have said something if we, y’know, had been doing something wrong, right?”

Castiel squinted. Angels and subtlety; a decade and it was still like oil on water.

“Pronouns,” Dean said vaguely. “I mean, you’re not…really anything.”

Angel or not, Castiel had no visible feathers—and yet, he still managed to give Dean a sense of ruffling and puffing up indignantly. It was adorable, though Dean would never say it out loud, as it’d taken him enough years to allow himself to think it. 

“I certainly am  _ something _ ,” Cas grumbled.

_ “Not _ what I meant.” Dean sighed, trying to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. It would have been a fond roll, anyway, after all these years. He was weak like that.

In the rearview mirror, Sam smirked. Bitch. He wasn’t helping at all.

Dean tried again, more softly. More to the point. “I was just checking that we haven’t been misgendering you in some way by calling you a ‘he’ all these years.”

“No,” said Castiel simply, his eyes drifting back out of the window.

“Right,” Dean said, relieved. “So, you wouldn’t prefer, like, ‘they’, or something? Just checking.”

Castiel gave a little shrug. “He, she, they. None of them would bother me.”

“There’s not one that applies more than the other for you?” Dean asked, genuinely curious by then, his arms on his knees as he leaned forward.

“No. Those terms don’t quite translate to me. They all apply. As I currently, for lack of a better term”—Castiel gestured down from his chest to his thighs—“present as a male, ‘he’ leads to the least confusion.”

“Cool,” said Dean. And that was that.

Sam was still smirking in the mirror, though. Bastard.

By the time Sam had parked Baby (with several helpful backseat parking suggestions from Dean) in a large lot set aside for the parade, Dean felt much calmer. So, of course, he immediately snatched the Impala keys back from Sam. The whole…whole  _ thing  _ with the parade, it wasn’t about him. No one was pointing fingers, or trying to back him into a corner. Sam didn’t know. More importantly…Cas didn’t know.

Surely they didn’t know...

He could do this.

Couldn't he?

It was a gorgeous day, hot and bright and welcoming as the three of them strode onto the blocked-off streets of downtown. Not that the weather made Castiel take his coat off or anything super wild like that. It was just nice. Dean eased out of his plaid shirt and tied it around his waist, and Sam shucked his only moments later, sweating like the giant moose he was. Heat does rise upwards, after all.

“There’s so many people here,” Dean said, genuinely surprised and secretly delighted. “Like, all ages of people.”

“Of course there are,” Sam said, his voice taking on the same tone he developed when he was about to tell Dean ten irrelevant facts about a monster they’d already disposed of. “And even for the older folks, this is just as likely to be as new an experience for them as it is for you.”

Dean wasn’t sure where that was going, but it sounded like…

“Some people aren’t ready to come out until their thirties, or forties, or far beyond that,” Sam continued, his oversized frame parting the crowds effortlessly. “People need to do it in their own time. I read about a man that finally came out to his family and married the love of his life at eighty-five. It was heartwarming.”

“Heartwarming?” Dean couldn’t help but snark in Sam’s direction. Yes, okay, maybe  _ privately _ Dean thought that story sounded fucking adorable, but you wouldn’t find the word “heartwarming” falling from his lips.

Ahh…there it was; his Dad’s voice in the back of his head. He’d known that was coming since he’d seen the first goddamn rainbow sign. Hadn’t he spent the whole morning trying to avoid this? Trying to avoid—

Dean’s brain melted and squished to a halt as, suddenly, Castiel’s hand slipped into his.

Pulling him along through the busy street so they wouldn’t be separated, Castiel was smiling at something up ahead—his usual smile that Dean loved, that was all eyes and hardly any lips—and pointing as they walked. 

“Look, Dean,” he said cheerfully, and so damn calmly. “Flags.”

There was so much sound; music and shouting and laughing and stomping feet, but it was barely breaking through the white noise of Dean’s head spinning faster and faster while he tried to look calm. 

Look cool. Look collected. Like none of this was affecting him or had anything to do with him.

_ But it did, it did, it always had, and maybe Sam and Cas— _

“Beer,” Sam said suddenly, appearing on Dean’s left and pressing a sweating plastic cup into his left hand. “Not great stuff, but the best we’re going to get from a street vendor at a parade, I guess.”

Dropping Castiel’s hand, Dean threw back the beer and opened his throat. Done in mere moments, he grimaced, burped, and shoved the cup back toward Sam. It tasted like Bud Light, which would explain the giant, inflatable, rainbow Bud Light bottle bobbing above the crowd. 

Sam raised an eyebrow silently at Dean before slipping Dean’s empty cup under his own barely touched one. Castiel, too, was looking at him oddly. 

Panicking, Dean pushed Castiel back in the direction he’d been leading Dean. 

Castiel didn’t grab his hand again. Immediately, Dean missed it. One of a million things he’d never allowed himself to express.

Humming  _ AC/DC _ loudly over the scornful voice in his ears, Dean slipped his sweaty hand back into Castiel’s.

Castiel didn’t react. In fact, he was a little  _ too _ unsurprised. That motherfucker.

“Still don’t know why people do this,” Dean grumbled under his breath, trying to avoid walking into anyone in the crowd. “It’s awful. Gimme a vampire nest any day.”

“So that they aren’t alone, Dean,” Castiel responded gently, his hearing far too fucking good. “So that they get to be proud of who they are. Once they get there. In their own time.”

“Shut up,” Dean mumbled childishly. He knew that. That wasn’t what he  _ meant. _ He meant… God, he didn’t even know anymore. 

Castiel squeezed Dean’s hand.

“Oh, flags,” Sam said, unaware of Dean’s whining. Which was good, he decided, because he didn’t need an earful from Sam, too. 

Castiel led the way and they walked on. Something in the crowd was oddly infectious, in the very best way. Slowly, Dean found himself smiling back at all the people who grinned in his direction, his spirits lifted to see so many united individuals singing and dancing and surging around the outskirts of the parade route. 

He got it. He did. Here, they could just  _ be. _

Dean had rarely ever, in his life, been able to just  _ be. _

The worst part, the part that annoyed him more than anything, was that he didn’t know for sure if the voice in the back of his head was really his Dad’s. He didn’t know what John Winchester would have thought of his eldest son being at a pride parade, because he’d never had the balls to ask. He’d never been  _ comfortable _ with himself like that.

Dean was a hunter. Dean had a world to save. He didn’t have time to be selfish. Or, he hadn’t...before.

His thoughts were interrupted by the solid wall of Castiel’s trench-coated back as he came to a sudden stop in front of the table covered in flags.

Holy shit, that was a lot of flags. 

His eyes must have been wide because Sam started excitedly pointing out some of the ones Dean had never seen before, launching into an impassioned speech about every single one of them while he shoved a twenty-dollar bill in Castiel’s direction.

Castiel didn’t seem to need any instructions on what to buy, which was concerning. Was Cas going to get flags for all of them? Did...Did that mean that he knew…?

“I think I need another beer,” Dean blurted loudly to silence his own thoughts.

Expecting some kind of sarcastic remark from Sam for interrupting his lecture, Dean let out a sigh of relief when all he received was a considering nod.

“Sure. There’s another vendor up here. Cas, come catch up in a sec?”

Castiel gave Sam a nod, and Dean made a beeline for the next floating rainbow beer bottle. Bud Light had never been so tempting. 

Sam bought another drink for Dean and a water for himself. At Sam’s judgy look, Dean sipped slowly at his cup. 

They stood in silence, but only for a moment before it broke.

“Dean—”

“Sam, why are we here?”

To his credit, Sam didn’t bullshit. “Cas expressed interest, and I thought it’d be good for you.”

Back to silence.

Dean knew what Sam wanted him to say, what Castiel probably  _ deserved _ for him to say by now, but there were too many things attached to those words, too much pressure. Dean moistened his lips, opened his mouth, shut it again. Nothing came.

Castiel pushed through the crowd in front of them, holding a white plastic bag with three sticks poking out of the top.

Staring at the bag, Dean bit down on his lip until it tasted like a fight, all the while trying to tell his body that it wasn’t one. 

Castiel handed Sam some change first, and it gave Dean a few more seconds to pull himself together.

From within the bag, Castiel pulled out a paper flag on a stick. It was rolled up, and it slowly uncurled on the breeze before Dean’s eyes. It was pink, and yellow, and blue, and it rippled in the air, looking bright, joyous, and free. 

With the loosest, most gleeful movement that Dean had seen Castiel make since he’d left Heaven, Castiel gave it a little wave.

Sam smiled. “A pansexual flag. Glad they had the right one, buddy. Did you get me one?”

“Of course,” Castiel said, digging out paper flag number two. 

“Thanks, Cas.” Sam’s was a rainbow pride flag, and Sam clutched it contentedly in the opposite hand to his beer, an ally and yet, Dean felt, somehow more worthy of his place here than he was. 

Well...fuck that.

“What about me?” Dean asked, hating the way his voice shook. “I should have one too, right? Did they have…”

Sam and Castiel watched him, waiting, waiting on the words. But Dean couldn’t make them, not yet.

Castiel gazed at Dean steadily for a few seconds more before he smiled, the warmest and widest that he had all day. Digging out the last flag from the bag, Cas stepped toward Dean. Pressing the stick of the paper flag into Dean’s hand, the pink, purple, and blue bisexual stripes flapping in the breeze, Castiel’s hand remained curled with his for a moment.

Right there on the street, surrounded by hundreds of people who didn’t even bat an eyelash, Castiel leaned across and pressed his lips warmly to Dean’s cheek, whispering, “In your own time, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> I have considered writing a couple more vignettes following this version of Dean and Cas, but I'm not sure this 'verse needs more. If you're interested though, do let me know in a comment!
> 
> Happy Pride Month!
> 
> \- Mal <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The First Pride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577579) by [CameronBlacksReads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CameronBlacksReads/pseuds/CameronBlacksReads)




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